A Cinderella Story
by Alicamel
Summary: A ten year old Susan Ivanova deals with her mother's death.


Many thanks to super-beta Starkiller [http://www.darksites.com/souls/pagan/starkiller/fandomdex.html, starkiller@primus.com.au] and also to Lisa, a non B5-fan (yes, they exist) who took a look at it for me.  
  
La, la, la, B5 ain't mine. : ( But Tara is! : )  
  
A Cinderella Story   
  
After she left, I took it upon myself to fill her shoes. While my brother studied at Earthforce Academy, 3,000 miles away, while my father buried himself in his work and ignored his family, while her body lay cooling in the sodden earth.  
  
I scoured the kitchen floor until my hands were raw and bleeding. I cleaned high-up corners of rooms, balancing precariously on boxes of my mother's belongings, not caring that I could fall. I polished and washed and scrubbed, as if trying to scrub away her touch, the mark she left on everything around me, the reminders of her presence that haunted me at night.  
  
Everything I wore turned to rags and sackcloth, in the memory of the clothes she would pick out for me. My hair turned to rat's tails, knotted and loose, because I could never get it right, never do it the way she used to.  
  
I had a routine. I would get up and wash in the cold water of the kitchen sink, not able to bring myself to go to the bathroom which still smelt of her shampoo. Then I would clean and scrub until the sun passed over my head, and sunk again beyond the far horizon. In the beginning, it would take so long that I would barely sleep for two hours, until I woke to begin again. But, as time passed, I fulfilled my self-appointed punishment more quickly. Some days I made myself do it again, convinced that it wasn't good enough, that if she came back now, she would be disappointed in me.  
  
Some days I sat staring into the now unused fireplace.   
  
Only she ever lit it, but it was always lit when I come into the house, the light filling the kitchen, except those days when the Psi Cops came around, and then not as often, later, before. . .  
  
Now the logs are long since turned to ashes, and I draw pictures in them, idle sketches as my mind began to fall asleep, the rising cinders clinging to my clothes, and skin, and hair. Sometimes in my half awake state I would hear her, knocking at my mind. I was convinced that she was on her way home, and would run into the street, barefoot, looking for her.  
  
It wasn't long I began to sleep down there. I can't imagine what my father thought.  
  
It was Ganya, my brother, who convinced my father that I had to go back to school. She's missed a year, he said, you can't let her wallow any longer.   
  
'A year.' I thought as I crouched at the kitchen door, listening. I hadn't realised time had passed so quickly. I hadn't realised had passed so slowly. I hadn't realised time had passed.  
  
School filled up my days again, though I hated the teachers and the pupils, and when Psi Corps came to test us I realised that my mother was no longer there to protect me anymore. No more moving from school to school, no more keeping one step ahead. I looked at the black uniform, and the black gloves and the shinning bronze badge. I looked in to the woman's eyes and thought she was my mother.  
  
I remembered just in time how to fake the test. But instead of nursery rhymes, I filled my head with my mother, with sadness and grief, so nothing else would be found. Not that I imagined anything else was there to be found.   
  
When the Psi Cop who looked like my mother reeled back in surprise at the intensity, another whispered in her ear.   
  
'She lost her mother.' I imagine him telling her. 'About a year ago. She was a Sleeper. Suicide, they say, though the family covered it up to get her buried.'  
  
It was seven years on, when, sometime before sunset, I heard my mother knocking at my mind. I ran out, as I always did, and there was someone there.  
  
'Hello, Susochenkta.' She crouched before me, making herself smaller than me. 'My name is Tara. I was a friend of your mothers.' She was dressed in black, and with her black hair, I thought for a moment that she had walked out of the night sky.  
  
She took me upstairs, wiped away my endless tears, and, took off my rags. She dressed me in silks, a dress, she told me softly, she had given my mother.  
  
'She'd want you to have it.'  
  
We sat at the kitchen table, the moon shining in, and drank coffee into the early hours. I talked about my mother, and she listened to me. I told her of my anger, my fears, me love. I cried, and she wiped them gently from my cheeks.  
  
At midnight, she took me upstairs, and removed the silk dresses. She tucked me in, kissed my cheeks, and left.  
  
She came the next night, and dressed me in silks again. We sat and she talked about her father, a Sleeper, like my mother, who also took his own life. We shared our fears, about becoming sleepers ourselves. I asked her how she coped, and she smiled mysteriously.   
  
At midnight, she slipped out, though I begged her to stay longer.  
  
'They lock the gates at one.' She said.  
  
'You can stay here. My father is always away.'  
  
She shook her head silently and left.  
  
On the third night she taught me to dance. We waltzed around the kitchen table, stopping only when I caught my thigh on he sharp edge of the fireplace. The blood trickled down my leg, and I stared transfixed, while she pressed a cold cloth against it. At half twelve she suddenly panicked.   
  
'If I don't go now, I'll be locked out.' I repeated my invitation to stay. 'No. I have to run. Goodbye Susochenkta.'   
  
She didn't come the next night, and I spent all day worrying. Had she been locked out? Was she in trouble? Was she safe?  
  
On the fifth night she brought me glass slippers. 'Dancing feet like yours deserve to be well dressed.'   
  
I was so relieved to see her. 'I'll only wear them to dance with you.' I swore. She laughed, and we danced all night. At midnight I told her the time, and she smiled and kept dancing.   
  
When she came the next night, I was not at the front door, waiting for her. She crept up to the bedroom and asked me what I was doing.  
  
'I can not dress in silks forever.' I told her, throwing the glass shoes into a corner, the dress into another.  
  
'I'm old enough to be your mother.'  
  
'You're not.' I replied, stepping closer.  
  
'I'm more like her than you think, Susochentka.' She whispered, as I took her bare hand. I knew what she meant, and I looked down at the skin on skin.  
  
//I don't care.//  
  
//I could turn you in.//  
  
//I'm not afraid.//  
  
//Always defiant. Stubborn, like Sophia.//  
  
//Determined.//  
  
//Argumentative.//  
  
//Persuasive.//  
  
//Annoying.//  
  
//Charming.//  
  
//Beautiful.//  
  
And then, all thoughts fled from my mind.  
  
Later, she would hold me in her arms, and whisper against my neck. I don't think she thought I was awake, I don't think she knew I could hear her.  
  
Apologies. To me, to my mother. Sometimes curses, against some unknown assailant.  
  
For a year, she came to my house each night. I still dressed in silks and still wore those glass shoes she bought me. She'd stay with me, and wouldn't leave until the sun rose, red slowly bleeding into black.  
  
It was only later that I thought she might be tricking me, trying to find out if I had inherited my mothers genes. I am so much more paranoid now. Then, I think I would have joined the Corps to stay with her.  
  
I wish I could say this story ended happily, or even dramatically, but - it didn't. One night, she just wasn't there. Each night I waited till midnight, and then came home. On the third night I swore at the night sky, and threw both shoes at a tree. The glass tinkled as it shattered.  
  
I think I that was the night I lost my mother, at the age of nineteen, nine years after she died.   
  
I'm not angry with Tara. She's always there now, no matter what happens, like a promise that things will be okay, eventually. I can look back and smile, even if there is a little bit of sadness in it.   
  
And that may be corny, but I don't care. Everything dies. Love, joy, happiness. I've accepted that. And I've learnt to live with it.   
  
  
  
  
  
Feedback is loved wholeheartedly. Review below, or email me at alicamel@hotmail.com  



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